Red Dawn (1984)

The war to liberate the Mickey D's begins...At Dawn.

"Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall... Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil... Mexico plunged into revolution... NATO dissolves. United States stands alone." —Opening Narration

The classic Red Scare film, released in the darkness immediately preceding glasnost.

After the opening narration, we cut to a classroom of teenagers in scenic Colorado. Their little piece of America gets invaded by Soviet and Cuban paratroopers. Six students manage to get away in Jed Eckert's truck and escape to the mountains, where they become guerillas against the new communist regime. They're joined by two girls, Toni and Erica, and later downed pilot Colonel Andy Tanner, who teaches them some basic military tactics. Oh, and they have guns.

Also noted for the first onscreen pairing of Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, who later costarred in the classic Dirty Dancing to the delight of fangirls everywhere. Also the first film to be released with the PG-13 rating.

The film received a remake that was released in 2012, starring Chris Hemsworth. It is a Setting Update which replaced the Soviets, Cubans, and Nicaraguans with Chinese North Koreans With Nodongs and ultranationalist Russians.

---

Tropes:

• Analogy Backfire: Only if one assumes this was analogous to the USSR invading Afghanistan. Many Taliban fighters gained experience repelling the Soviets, and would later use those skills attacking civilians.
  • And, ironically, Americans.
• Anti-Villain: Colonel Bella, who is an officer in the invading army, but finds himself sympathizing with the guerrillas. Colonel Strelnikov is also one.
• Anyone Can Die: Even girls, subverting Men Are the Expendable Gender.
• Axe Crazy: Robert slides down the rungs.
• Battle Cry: "Wolverines!" The Wolverines are the school football team. The protagonists leave the spray-painted symbol of their mascot at the site of ambushes.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Cuban and Russian troops speak their own language, with subtitles. Played for laughs in one scene when a Russian officer playing tourist pretends to translate a forestry sign, saying it commemorates a bloody Indian revolt.
• Bittersweet Ending, The kids lose their innocence and All but two lose their lives, though it's suggested by the Partisan Rock memorial that America Wins the War.
• Black Dude Dies First: The History teacher at the beginning of the movie is the very first person killed onscreen when he walks up to some heavily armed paratroopers, asking them what's going on.
  • Everyone thought it was a military training drop which had been blown off course — people don't automatically assume they're being invaded.
  • In addition, Aardvark, the one Latino among the Wolverines, is the first one of them to get killed.
• Broken Bird: It's strongly implied that one of the girls was raped by Soviet soldiers.
• Child Soldiers: The movie does a good job of showing how warfare can psychologically scar child soldiers.
• Clifftop Caterwauling
• China Takes Over the World North Korea Takes Over The World: the remake of the film is a slight smaller scale of this trope where the Chinese North Koreans take over America.
• Click Hello: "You lose."
• Colonel Badass: Both Tanner and Bella qualify.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Colonel Strelnikov "The Hunter", who not only thinks of ways to track (and later trap) the Wolverines, but also orders the reprisals against civilians to stop as it only creates support for them.
• Death From Above: Early in the movie, a lone American helicopter shows up a couple of times to strafe or fire rockets at Soviet positions, serving as The Cavalry in a Gunship Rescue at one point. Gets an Ironic Echo towards the end when a pair of Soviet Hind gunships slaughter half the group. Also, towards the last act of the film, we see American jets doing bombing runs in "No Man's Land".
• Defiant to the End: The first group of civilians executed by way of reprisal for the Wolverines' attacks dies singing America the Beautiful in the face of the Soviet firing squad.
• Development Hell: The remake actually managed to make it all the way through the production phase, only to get sunk by MGM's financial insolvency.
  • It was also delayed because the premise of China attacking America scared off all other major distributors, so MGM had to change the villain to North Korea in order to make it more attractive to film companies, and even then it took several months before it finally found a distributor willing to take a chance on the film.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Justified and Played for Drama, since several of the Wolverines are killed in pointless ways, most notably Aardvark.
• Dirty Communists: Averted; though the movie doesn't stint in depicting Communist atrocities, some enemy soldiers are portrayed as human beings rather than evil faceless mooks.
• Doomed Hometown
• The Dragon: Soviet counter-insurgency specialist, Colonel Strelnikov "The Hunter".
  • He seems closer to the Big Bad actually.
• Drive-In Theater: Now used as a POW and indoctrination camp.
• Eagle Land (Type I, of course.)
• Elite Mooks: Soviet spetsnaz are brought in to track down the Wolverines. They're as effective as all the other mooks. They may however have been the ones responsible for the ambush that got Robert and Toni killed. Colonel Strelnikov is also the one who kills Jed and Matt, although Jed kills him too.
• Et Tu, Brute?: The revelation that one of their own has betrayed them signifies a turn for the worst for the Wolverines fortunes.
• Exact Words: Early in the movie, a bumper sticker appears, with the line "They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers". The camera pulls back to show a communist soldier prying a handgun...
• Executive Meddling: Writer-director John Milius wanted to focus on the War Is Hell aspect, while the studio pressed for a more idealized presentation. The most obvious result of this is the tacked-on epilogue, which explicitly states that Americans won the war due to bravery of fighters like the Wolverines. Without it, the movie would have left it open if the efforts of the Wolverines changed anything in the end. The darker approach shows through in several places, such as how many of the heroes meet their ends in meaningless deaths.
  • For the remake, the enemies were changed from Chinese to North Koreans. The studio claims this is because North Korea will make a scarier villain, but most observers believe this was done to avoid losing box office revenues in China. This happened after production ended, so they have to digitally alter all Chinese symbols and dub all Chinese dialogue.
    • Actually, it was mostly done to help the film secure a distributor, as no other major studio wanted to touch a film about China invading America.
• Expanded Universe: This thread on alternatehistory.com, which got to 335 pages (!) as of April 2011 before moving to its current location, is a so-called "double-blind what-if" in which posters role-play veterans of the war depicted in the movie. Much discussion on weapons and campaigns of the war, as well as on the fates of surviving movie characters; for example, Colonel Bella ended up defecting to the Allied side shortly after the events of the movie, became a U.S. citizen and helped U.S. authorities track down war criminals after the end of the war..
  • Now has its own TVTropes page.
• Facing the Bullets One-Liner: God Bless America...
  • Also,

Spetsnaz about to be executed: Dogface! I show you how soldier dies!

• Funny Moments: Most notably the elite paramilitary group...Eagle Scouts. It was a blink and miss moment, but the Arapaho National Forest information sign when translated by Yuri turned out hilarious.
• Gag Sub: Done with the Spanish and Russian subtitles on this youtube version. There's a Riff Trax out there as well.
• The Great Politics Mess-Up: Peace broke out with the Russians what, a year after this was made? And it's not like it was the height of the Cold War either, despite military overspending... But then again, the movie takes place in an Alternate History anyway.
• The Hero Dies: Which contributes to several more tropes being played straight.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several.
• He Who Fights Monsters:

Tanner: "All that hate's going to burn you up, kid." Robert (carving 'kill' notches on his AK-47 with a balisong): "Keeps me warm."

• Improperly Placed Firearms / Rare Vehicles / Just Plane Wrong: Generally averted with mock-ups ranging from machine guns to APCs and helicopters, though a sharp-eyed weapons buff can still tell the difference. Elite Mooks use the AK74 rifle (or at least an effective facsimile, mocked up from the same Egyptian AK copies used by the other "Soviet" extras), rarely seen in movies made before the collapse of the Iron Curtain. A mock-up of a T72 tank was so accurate it reportedly caught the attention of two CIA men who wanted to know where it had come from.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Tanner needs one after the kids express their ignorance of common military tactical terms.
• Insert Grenade Here: When the group is pinned down by a tank (which doesn't see them) one of the main characters attempts this but gets hurt pretty badly and is unable to complete the task. Instead he sets off a smoke grenade so that friendly fire can spot the tank and blow it (and him) up.
• Invaded States of America: Shining example.
• It's Up to You
• Just Plane Wrong: SA 330 Pumas stand in for Mi-24 Hind-A gunships since the actual chopper wasn't the sort of thing you could borrow back in the day.
• La Résistance
• The Laws and Customs of War: A captured soldier starts giving his name and rank, and gets promptly beaten up.

"No-one gives a damn who you are!"

• • In the same scene,

"This violates the Geneva Convention!" "I've never heard of it!"

• Minion with an F In Evil: Colonel Ernesto Bella is initially introduced in a way that suggests he's the movie's Big Bad. However, not only is he not in charge of the local occupying force, but is shown to be far more reasonable than his Soviet counterparts (he criticizes them for the stupid tactic of shooting civilians after every Wolverine attack, saying that they're only gaining support because of it). He eventually becomes increasingly disillusioned with the war to the point where after the Eckert Brothers' last stand, he momentarily holds them at gun point before letting them go and dropping his gun in disgust. In other circumstances, Bella could well have been a classic Worthy Opponent.
  • In the scene where civilian prisoners/hostages are executed after the Wolverines make their first kills of Soviet soldiers, Bella is clearly far more disgusted by the town mayor's horrified reaction than by the defiance of the executed hostages.
• Missing Backblast: Averted: In the final battle two of the American guerillas fire their RPG-7's at the command trailer used by a Soviet general. An enemy soldier who comes round the corner behind them at that precise moment falls to the ground screaming as he's been scorched by the backblast.
  • Subverted in at least one scene, where one of the Wolverines loses his hat while firing an RPG-7.
• Mood Whiplash: The movie keeps shifting between pure Narm (often with lines about patriotism and fighting spirit) and genuinely dark moments.
• Narm: "AVENGE ME! AVENGE ME!"
• Not So Different:
  • The Soviet soldiers in general. When they're not getting shot or blown up, they talk about their families, goof around, invent hilarious translations for English signage, and otherwise act a little like tourists.
  • One of the Wolverines asks this when Jed is about to execute both a captured soldier and The Mayor's completely unwilling turncoat of a son.

Matt: "What's the difference, Jed? Tell me, what's the difference between us and them?" Jed: "Because...WE LIVE HERE!" (shoots soldier)

• • Colonel Bella gets his moment as well when the aftermath of a Wolverines raid reminds him of his own guerrilla fighter past:

Bella: "I have seen this before. But these are my men!"

• Nuke'Em: Precision nuclear strikes wipe out silos in the Dakotas, plus key communications points like Omaha, Washington, and Kansas City. Further strikes are averted by the Soviets' need to take the United States intact. Other countries though...

Jed Eckert: "Well, who *is* on our side?" Col. Tanner: "Six hundred million screaming Chinamen." Darryl Bates: "Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen." Col. Tanner: "There *were*." (tosses his booze on the fire, so it gives out a great burst of flame)

• • This exchange may become Harsher in Hindsight or Hilarious in Hindsight with a remake, since the Chinese are were the prospective villains.
  • It's never explained what happened to the rest of the Nuclear Triad, like the SSBN's each of which carry at least a dozen Missles and most of which are likely carrying mutiple warheads. Or the Nuclear Armed B-52's, which were often kept on Airborne Alert during the Cold War. Apparently the subs and bombers decided to sit out the war as well.
• One Sided Battle: The Wolverines regularly wipe out larger forces, even though guerilla doctrine advises using a large number of guerillas to attack much smaller army units. There is some thought given to tactics however, such as making an ambushed force take cover in an area covered by claymore mines, or using the girls to plant bombs. Also by the end of the movie all except two of the Wolverines have been killed.
• Pragmatic Villainy: As stated above, Bella opposes killing civilians not because it is morally wrong but because it increases support for the Wolverines.
• Precocious Crush: Toni falls in love with older and married Colonel Tanner, though there's nothing physical between them except a bit of tussling.
• The Quisling: Mayor Bates. Unusually for this trope, he's clearly following the enemy out of fear alone, and is obviously terrified and disgusted by his town's new occupiers.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan inspired the film.
• Reality Subtext: The current political climate necessitated the change of the antagonists in the remake from China to North Korea.
  • The notion of using Chinese in the first place for the remake due to the Dissolution of Soviet Union. Noted that China was originally an ally of the U.S. also fitting the affiliation of China towards the end of the Cold War.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Robert drinks the blood of the first deer he shoots, and notes he likes the taste. He eventually ends up the most Axe Crazy of the Wolverines.

"Then you'll be a real hunter. My dad said that once you do that, there's going to be something different about you, always."

• Recycled in Space: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan....in America!
• Reds with Rockets. And tanks. And paratroopers. And Hind gunships. And ZSU-23-4 self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.
• The Reveal: One of the last scenes of the movie does, at least, help answer why the Soviets devote so much attention and manpower to this one specific town: A railroad runs through it.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Unarmed prisoners and enemy wounded are shot by the Wolverines.
• Sanity Slippage: Robert.
• Shmuck Bait: The Wolverines see a Soviet truck drop some supplies on the road so clumsily that it screams too easy, yet they get them without suspicion and pay the price as a Soviet attack helicopter attacks.
  • Though to be fair, they were likely starving by that point.
• Spot the Imposter: On being asked what's the capital of Texas, Colonel Tanner replies "Austin" and is immediately accused by Toni of being a Dirty Communist. He replies that she's seen too many movies. It doesn't help that Tanner's answer that Austin was the capital of Texas was correct, while Toni was certain that Houston was its capital. Likely a Shout-Out to a well-known incident during the Battle of the Bulge (see the Real Life section of Spot the Imposter).
• Truth in Television: When the film was released, NPR had a former member of the Dutch Resistance give a review of it. He said the movie exactly portrayed the life of a partisan force, including the desperation, mistrust, and "cannibalism" (ie, "swallowed a bug" scene) that occurs.
• Token Minority: Averted for the remake. Early scripts mentioned an Asian American Wolverine named Erica Yu. However, "Erica" is now being played by the white Isabel Lucas.
  • Token Enemy Minority: The remake's Wikipedia page lists Asian American actor Ken Choi as part of the cast. His character's surname is Smith so it can be presumed that he's a half-white American good guy. Alternately, he may be adopted, or the name could be a placeholder.
• Voice of the Resistance: Radio Free America.
• Warrior Poet: When Col. Bella writes home to his sweetheart, it's nothing if not beautiful.
• World War III
• Yanks With Tanks: A single M1 Abrams appears briefly, curiously unsupported by other armour or infantry.
• You Meddling Kids: And the Reds would have won, too.
• Your Mom

Spetsnaz about to be executed: Dogface! I show you how soldier dies! Robert: I've seen it before, pal.

• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The movie essentially transplanted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to a different setting, placing a group of typical American youth in the roles of the Afghan freedom fighters.
  • Which becomes Harsher in Hindsight considering what they caused